This blog began when I chronicled a 3-week family vacation pulling our travel trailer from Texas to Northern California. Packed in with our five unschooled children like sardines in a can, we made it to California without resorting to cannibalism. In fact, we had a great time! So the chronicle continues... no longer on vacation but still groovin' on a great journey.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

An Apology

Ellie teaches piano lessons here several times a week. And I always know when the students are coming and so we try not to be in our underwear, or have our underwear on the floor, or have excessive amounts of general, non-underwear related mayhem going on. It is tough but I usually manage to pull it off.

But on Friday a family came for piano lessons who doesn't normally come for piano lessons and if Ellie had told me about it I hadn't heard her and so (gasp) we were caught in our totally natural and embarrassingly unrestrained habitat. To that family? I would like to sincerely apologize.

1. I apologize that the front door was barricaded by a tacky fence. The fence is intended to keep the dementia-suffering wiener dog from continuing to destroy the molding around the edge of our front door while causing her little paws to bleed from scratching endlessly.

2. I apologize that the back door was blocked by a baby gate, the purpose of which is the same as the tacky fence across the front door.

3. I apologize for the two ice chests, several pairs of skates, green light saber, and overturned bike that were also blocking the back door.

4. I apologize for the bird poop that you had to step over after you managed to get over the baby gate. It has piled up next to the back door - but did you see the cute baby barn swallows peeping over the edge of their nest?

5. I apologize that I didn't hear you when you finally made it across the threshold of the back door and into my hallway, the one right outside my bedroom.

6. I apologize for the fact that you were startled by me, my ultra-white and only paritially hairless legs, and a very noisy epilator when you looked into my bedroom. I don't normally perform grooming rituals in front of strangers.

7. I apologize for the fact that I was wearing my husband's bleach-stained ACDC t-shirt - the one sporting a youthful Angus Young sprouting demonic horns from his head while snarling. Despite what you may have heard in the homeschooling circles, and despite the demonic image on my t-shirt, we are not Satan worshipers.

8. I apologize for the underwear sprinkled on the couch and floor of the living room. It was clean. I promise. I know because I collected it, washed it, dried it, and even stupidly folded it and left it on the couch in neat little stacks. I am, however, currently on strike in regards to actually delivering it into the drawers of its owners, none of whom, by the way, are suffering from broken legs.

9. I apologize for the fact that instead of my daughter playing Chopin in our den, you found my son playing totally non-Christian Black Sabbath riffs on his electric guitar, thereby possibly strengthening any small and fledgling suspicions about the Satan worship business. Let me just say that I don't like Black Sabbath or Ozzy Osbourne very much - although I did indeed see the Crazy Train Tour in 1982. And if Ozzy worships Satan, I'm not sure Satan is aware of it because Ozzy, due to previous years of drug abuse, seems unable to form coherent sentences. If Ozzy is talking to Satan, Satan is like, "Huh?" My son doesn't talk to Satan. He just likes to play Iron Man and I'm pretty sure he's not having any spiritual reflections whatsoever while doing so.

10. I apologize for the fact that my son unplugged his guitar, said, "Excuse me," and then STEPPED OVER THE DOG POOP ON THE FLOOR on his way out of the room to find his sister.

11. I apologize for the fact that you could smell the dog poop and am grateful for the fact that you apparently missed stepping on it by mere millimeters.

12. I apologize for the fact that when Ellie emerged, she screamed, "Joel come pick up the dog poop!!" instead of saying, "Hello, how lovely to see you. Welcome to our home."

13. I apologized if she cursed.

14. I apologize for the fact that Joel refused to pick up the dog poop.

15. I apologize for the fact that your children's lessons were then delayed while Ellie angrily picked up the dog poop.

16. I apologize if she cursed.

17. I apologize PROFUSELY for the fact that there was dog poop on the floor in the first place.

18. I apologize for the apparent lack of surprise over the poop on the part of my family. There was a time when dog poop on the floor disgusted us as much as it does you. But since the ailing wiener dog has no feeling in her lower extremities and pretty much wanders around my house dropping poo balls unawares, we have become used to it. You'd be surprised at what you can get used to.

19. I apologize for letting the ailing wiener dog in the house in the first place, seeing as how so much effort has gone into fortifying the perimeter of the house (as you so well discovered)against her entrance. My husband, also known as the Perimeter Enforcer, was out of town. The dog whines and cries and it is just dang pitiful.

20. I apologize for whatever may have happened after I left to go pick up my husband from the airport. I realize that this final apology might encompass a rather long list of offenses of which I am thankfully ignorant.

Please come back another time. Seriously. We welcome visitors. Just give us another chance. We're a totally different family when we're expecting you.